"I was in Irving, Texas, for a little over twelve days. I never know what the story is until I show up. I go in there not knowing anything about what’s going on. And I just went around and asked people questions. Talked to everyone—everyone I possibly could. I went and visited the mosque. I remember walking in the parking lot, and the sun’s out, families, kids are throwing around a football, a kid on a skateboard, and I thought, This is the story—these are just Americans trying to get by."

This panel features four accomplished veteran-writers who each served in Iraq between 2003 and 2005 in conversation about the long-lasting consequences of their experience of war. Looking back, the panel asks its participants to reflect on their service and their writing about war. Looking forward, it asks them about current writing projects that directly or indirectly address the ongoing importance of the Iraq War in their own lives, the lives of other veterans, and the life of the nation.

"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence."--Thomas Wolfe"God's Lonely Man"

"…stitching together the rottenness of respectable America and the misery of underclass America, the uselessness of a war that didn’t accomplish anything, and a personal experience of service and combat that beguiled him at first only to ruin him later."

"Few writers capture rejection from society quite so succinctly. However the converse is also true, as Buzzell waves the flag of defiance proudly in the face of nearly every American civil institution."

"Buzzell is the rare nonfiction writer who seems equally at ease recounting stories about himself — his war experience, his struggles with alcohol addiction and post-traumatic stress — as he is writing about others."